Tango Pro USB 2.0/Firewire 400/Firewire 800 2.5-Inch Hard Drive Enclosure TNGXXXUFBE-BLK (Black)

I've owned now three different external 2.5 inch drives for my Macbook Pro. After my OEM internal 500gb Seagate drive failed two days before going to Asia, I decided I was never leaving town again without a bootable drive as backup.The first external drive I had was a LaCie Rugged drive. Not bad, but wanted a 7200rpm drive. Second, I purchased OWC's Mercury on the Go external because it was so highly rated. I had no problems with it except it would get exceptionally hot...nearly too hot to touch comfortably. Another big downside for me was that I couldn't remove the OWC drive from the enclosure w/o voiding the warranty so that if my MBP's drive failed I was bound to always booting from an external drive rather than being able just swap the drives.While helping a friend install an upgraded drive in his Macbook, I found this little guy on Amazon. Checked it out and found that it comes with an Oxford chipset as did the OWC so thought I'd give it a try. I liked it so much, I bought one for myself and am selling my OWC.The instructions for disassembling the enclosure are a bit confusing (or were to me anyway)...but once you figure it out it is super easy. Just remove the two screws in the back of the drive, remove the faceplate in the back and the drive then slips out the front. Then you just slide your hard drive onto the tray, screw the (included) four screws to secure the drive on the tray, slide the drive in, put the face plate back on and screw the two screws back in place and you're set to go.I use it with the Firewire 800 for the faster speed and love it. I have a 500gb 7200rpm drive in it. Yes, it gets very warm...but to be honest, it does not get nearly as hot as the LaCie (which only had a 5400rpm drive) OR the Mercury on the Go with the same drive. I can easily hold this in my hand even after cloning 200gb of files onto the drive.Pros:Easy installationSmall and light (great for traveling-slides in/out of my case easily)Can remove the drive to swap in laptop if necessaryRuns off of computer's firewire--does not need additional power sourceDoes not get too hot (in my opinion)QuietCons:The firewire cable is high quality, but too long and bulky for travel (not really a con overall...just for traveling)Instructions are a bit sketchyIt comes with Firewire 800 & 400 cables as well as a USB2 cable. It also has a port for external power but no AC adapter. I have not needed one and am not sure why you would as it runs fine off the computer power.My only question now is durability. We'll see how long it lasts. But so far, so good.

Bought this from Amazon,Initially seemed to work, however, with larger data transfers the unit would "eject" from the computer even though the cable was still attached and cause data loss.I've tried with 2 separate SATA drives, and on all 3 interfaces.I am fairly certain the unit is defective, however it took too long for this defect to manifest and I missed the return window so I am stuck with the unit.I've registered the product with Acomdata, and filed 2 separate support tickets with them. I've heard nothing from Acomdata despite the fact that their support ticket system says I will hear from someone within 3 days.I don't think I have any options left, and the lack of any suport or even an email from Acomdata has been so frustrating that I actually bothered to write my first Amazon review just to be able to warn other buyers to avoid this manufacturer. I am sure some of the buyers of this product have had success, so I am not saying they are all bad units, but the fact that I got a bad unit and I have no way to use the warranty coverage from Acomdata tells me to stay away from this manufacturer because they are leaving their customers high and dry when it comes to support.

Like a few others here, I am seeing that I need a power adapter or my drive won't mount. I put a Hitachi 320GB 7200 rpm drive in this case, and I'm using it with a mid-2007 MacBook Pro (Santa Rosa 2.2Ghz, 10.6.2).I bought this case specifically to use FW800 and bus power. I already had an eSATA case for the Hitachi, but my eSATA express card was flaky and of course that case required a power adapter. I'm a musician that needs a portable and reliable rig, and I don't like having wall warts to deal with every time I set up for a gig. I'm considering returning this because I'm pretty sure my MBP delivers the correct amount of current through its FW ports to run this drive (I have no issues with other bus-powered cases). The curious thing is that when I first put the drive in this case, it DID work with bus power. However I didn't try doing any heavy lifting at that time, I only saw that the drives mounted OK. I just got back from a recording session where the engineer put 1.5 gigs of files on this drive in one shot. The drive mounted OK on his older Mac G4 desktop using FW400, and the file transfer went fine. Now the drive won't mount using bus power. Could it be that there's circuitry on the bridge board of this case that regulates the bus power to the drive, and it failed after the larger-than-usual file transfer?Also, as others have noted, the case does get pretty warm. As others say, it might be the aluminum dissipating the heat, which is a good thing, but I've has several of these 2.5" cases and none of them have gotten as warm as this one.